The Remains Of Carthage - Part 2 of 2 (Ancient Rome Documentary) | Timeline

[Music] you are looking at the hiroshima of the classical world below the suburbs of modern day tunis on the coast of north africa lies history's most infamous piece of scorched air carthage 146 bc the romans wiped it out in an act so brutal and so calculating that it has no equal in the ancient world they torched the city and massacred it enslaved its people they then destroyed what had survived the flames brick by brick this was the price carthage paid for defying rome for 150 years when the order was given to lender escotago carthage must be destroyed what followed was a roman holocaust the eradication of a city and the end of a civilization [Music] carthage was not just destroyed it was annihilated this was a city that ceased to exist [Music] it's a miracle that anything remains at all all that are left are the fragments of a sinister people i want to explore the real life of carthage according to the romans it was an incredibly dark world of oriental strangeness and barbaric sacrifice the foreigners from a far-off continent with weird beliefs and perverted practices [Music] but how much of what we know about carthage is true and how much of it is just the black propaganda of the romans i want to peel away the layers of myth and discover the truth about the carthaginians the most important of all why did rome have what it took to rule the world whilst carthage was crushed into oblivion for a hundred years carthage would remain a cursed wasteland a scene of total devastation but that's not the end of the story carthage will be brought back from the dead and who by none other than its bitterest enemy rome this resurrection wasn't an act of atonement but a supreme act of empire building which marked not just the death of one superpower but the birth of another carthage hadn't just been rome's only serious rival in death it had taught rome the secrets of empire without carthage rome would never have become the global power that it did on the corpse of their dead enemy the romans built a new carthage nothing of the old punic city remained even the land itself had to be completely transformed like many ancient cities carthage was centered around a hill called the bursa and it gave them a wonderful defensive panorama they could look out to sea and they could look out into the african hinterlands too when the romans came they hacked away the whole summit of the hill and created a completely flat area of over six hectares and then they constructed a massive concrete platform and built their own city on top of it and this would be the second largest city in the whole of the mediterranean world the romans were symbolically removing every last trace of the old carthage it was a potent way to tell the world we are your masters now the new carthage would be the capital of rome in africa its name says it all the colony of concord this city was supposed to be a public act of peace rome ruled the world but with reconciliation in its heart if you were gullible enough to believe it after the summit of the hill had been levelled the hundreds of thousands of tons of earth and rubble were shoved down the hill enveloping these punic houses below how ironic this symbol of the reconciliation between carthage and rome should bring about the further eradication of the punic past this was reconciliation roman style [Music] victory over carthage helped pave the way for rome's great step forward rome had been a republic for nearly 500 years but in 31 bc all power lay in the hands of one man not a senator not a general but an emperor augustus he created a new rome as the capital of their new world augustus was determined to construct a capital worthy of an emperor it was said that he found rome built in brick and left it in marble and part of that augustine legacy still stands today the pantheon built by his right hand man marcus agrippa as a temple for all the gods of rome exudes a sleek muscular authority this was a building fit for a city that was taking on the headship of the world under augustus rome's history was rewritten he commissioned virgil rome's greatest poet to create a spectacular myth that glorified rome called the aeneid the reason i find it so interesting is that in it carthage's history is rewritten too but with a new roman spin from now on carthage would be seen through the distorting eyes of their old enemy but the poem's heart is a tragic love story the tale recounts the epic adventures of a trojan prince called aeneas who set sail guided by the gods to found the roman people so aeneas is shipwrecked on the north african coast and here he meets dido an exiled queen from tyre which is the modern day lebanon and she's building a brand new city carthage now you can probably guess the next bit the future founders of the roman and carthaginian peoples embark on a passion then aeneas turns his back on his desperate lover and goes off to italy to fulfill his destiny dido is left with nothing but a ghastly suicide and an operatic vow after stabbing herself with her lover's sword and throwing herself onto the funeral pyre her last words to her people ring out across the ocean besiege his progeny with hate and all his people that come after him let there be no love and no path between our peoples let this be your offering to my ashes so the stage is beautifully set now for the everlasting enmity between these two cities and the eventual eradication of carthage herself [Music] the centuries-old rivalry between these two cities would become nothing more than the bitter legacy of a sperm lover this was political myth-making on an epic scale the sheer nerve of it after 150 years of bitter war what's carthage reduced to nothing more than a rejected woman crying for her roman lover but i think it went deeper than that in this epic poem lay the seeds of one of history's most powerful smear campaigns [Music] it's continued right up to the present day carthage has been branded as foreign decadent perverted cruel and treacherous but the worst accusation of them all was that the carthaginians as a sacrifice to their gods burnt their own children alive rome was the world's most powerful state it didn't just win wars it also knew how to win hearts and minds [Music] it was the romans who perfected the black arts of vilification and propaganda nobody did it better they set about one of the most concerted smear campaigns in history painting the carthaginians as everything the romans were not never mind the fact that the carthaginians made their home in the western mediterranean for nearly 800 years once rome's poisoned pens had finished their work carthage had been transformed into a culture of alien oriental intruders with no business sharing their world take for instance their language punic in theaters like this found right across the empire the romans performed plays that delighted in ridiculing the carthaginians in one play there was a scene full of what looks like punic dialogue and what do we find the carthaginians speak a gobbledygook which no self-respecting roman or greek could possibly understand modern scholars spent years trying to decipher it but unfortunately it literally was gobbledygook this wasn't punic at all it was a made-up language to make the carthaginians look as ridiculous as possible just listen to this yeth alamin walanut sikatorai sika makom sith what does that mean absolutely nothing this is more than just a good natured gag this was a conscious effort to marginalize and misrepresent the carthaginians as being nothing more than oriental interlopers a people who had no right to call this their home remember we're talking about the carthaginians a people who had ruled the western mediterranean for 800 years at a time when rome was nothing more than hicksville on the tiber the roman spin doctors did their job so well that the phrase punic or carthaginian faith actually came to mean treacherous behavior so the very word punic became an insult no wonder that the greek historian diodorus writing for a roman audience knew exactly what his readership wanted just when you thought the carthaginians couldn't be any worse he hit them with this they even incinerate their own children alive duplicate the blackest of gods he wrote there was in their city a bronze image of kronos extending its hands palms up and sloping towards the ground so that each of the children when placed there rolled down and fell into a gaping pit filled with fire roman slurs like so much of what they built have lasted for millennia diodorus horror story set the tone for hundreds of years of future visitors [Music] especially those drawn to north africa in search of just this kind of lurid tale in 1857 one of france's greatest writers guster flaubert arrived in tunisia inspired by the tales of ancient carthage his novel salambo was born it's a great read but it also reinforced the image of the carthaginians as being sexually perverted religious extremists in graphic detail flaubert describes how screaming children were dragged by their parents to the great statue of the god where they were burnt alive [Music] it's said that flo bear lived and worked here in this house overlooking the punic ports right in the heart of ancient carthage the perfect place to let your imagination run riot sixty years later just around the corner from here archaeologists made a series of chilling discoveries which seemed to give credence to his most sinister ideas twenty thousand of these simple terracotta urns have been found here in carthage even now i find their contents incredibly moving and unsettling inside were miniature pieces of jewelry the charred bones of animals and birds and the burnt remains of young children and babies [Music] was it more than just a case of fevered imagination could flow bear and die doris before him have actually been right was this the sacrificial site where the carthaginian gods were appeased with the blood of children these urns were found with hundreds of engraved stone dedications called steli archaeologists called this place the tophet now the tophet was a sacred precinct dedicated to two main gods and one of them was tanet and this is her sign here and it's an abstract figure of a woman with her arms outstretched and the other was bale hamoon the chief god of carthage and here's his sign and we find this everywhere this is the crescent moon and underneath it the sun and some people think he was also the god of fire which fits perfectly with the idea of babies being incinerated here scientific research has shown that many of the irons which contain human remains came from the 4th century so what happened then that could have provoked an infant holocaust well an invasion by a sicilian greek army and an attempted coup d'etat by one of carthage's own generals had thrown the city into turmoil an impanic response according to diadorus 500 children from aristocratic families were incinerated alive to appease carthage's bloodthirsty gods some of the engraving on this steel eye also suggests something sinister was happening here this is a priest his right hand raised in supplication and in his left hand he's cradling a swaddled infant was this baby being offered as a sacrificial victim [Music] for many historians and archaeologists this evidence is convincing was right the carthaginians in times of crisis did sacrifice their children to their gods it's so easy to condemn the carthaginians as barbaric baby killers but there is so much evidence that just doesn't make sense so if the carthaginians were really sacrificing their own children and it seems odd that amongst all these steely around me here there's not one direct reference to child sacrifice so was this a sinister dark secret was this a right that invoked so much shame that the very people that were practicing it were cowed into a conspiracy of silence on some of the steli there are these figures of people and on others what appear to be earns does that really provide compelling evidence for child sacrifice it wasn't only the carthaginians who were leaving dedications here a greek man called adrestros also left the steely so were the greeks sacrificing their children too and what of the tophet itself this place where countless guides have spooked tourists with stories of the slaughter of innocent children is in fact a vault built by the romans so this rather sinister environment is a very false one these regimented lines of steli would never have looked like this the brutal truth is that archaeologists have completely reconstructed the site even the name the tophet has been made up by modern scholars [Music] other so-called tophets have been found throughout the carthaginian empire not only in africa but even in europe not all the toefets were dark forbidding tampered with places like the one in carthage here in san antiocho in sardinia there's a tophet which is very different not least because it hasn't been ransacked by archaeologists okay many of these urns are replicas but the archaeologists who unearthed them have put them back in exactly the same positions that they were found and some of them are original well the guide suggests that it was here the babies were set down ready for sacrifice and that their innocent young blood would flow down this channel into the pool below but evidence there is none but there is something here that will really disturb you the mistral a wind which blows in from the north west here combines with these rocks to create a kind of natural bellows and this was capable of creating a fire of intense heat and sure enough down here archaeologists found a pile of ash full of burnt babies bones and a tiny button for an infant's garments the ash also contained the remains of herbs such as rosemary and lavender capable of masking any pungent smell like burning flesh those who've continued to believe the old story the carthaginians murdered their own children seize on this as evidence that it's true but i just don't believe it [Music] it was a much simpler and more convincing explanation for what has been found in the carthaginian tophets a vital piece of evidence lies here in the palermo museum in sicily this simple stone coffin which contains the body of a little girl is a real rarity because archaeologists have found very few infant burials from the carthaginian period and this simply doesn't stack up because we know that infant mortality rates are extremely high in antiquity four out of ten children didn't make it through to their second birthdays so where are the children where are they buried well there is one place where we know there are lots of dead babies and that's the tophet i believe that these children when they died were cremated and then placed within that sanctuary in other words the tophet was a children's cemetery not some sacrificial ground [Music] for a place so associated with death the toefl strikes me as being about the cycle of life i don't believe that these people sacrificed their children i think they were cremated after their natural deaths this was a community who understood the preciousness of life there's a frugality here infants who had died would give them back to where they'd come from in the hope that new life would spring forth stronger and better able to survive the fact that even today the myths still linger so powerfully tells us how well the roman hate campaign did its job the problem is we know so much about the myths but precious little about the reality underneath the layers of demonization who were these people what did they achieve the answer lies with their conquerors rome they built an even greater empire than carthages and what better way to do it than by stealing those secrets of carthagining greatness and passing them off as their own when rome destroyed carthage they tried to rub out every last trace of their old rivals in rome's brand new version of history they naturally omitted the fact that their most powerful enemy provided them with the template for the roman empire with a little detective work you can follow an amazing trail across europe and africa that reveals fragments of carthage's once great empire they give a tantalizing glimpse of who the carthaginians actually were they'd colonized huge amounts of land they were the undisputed superpower of the western mediterranean barely any settlements have survived but one has slipped through the net kirkuan on the north coast of tunisia this small carthaginian town had its heyday in the 3rd century bc and backwater whose obscurity spared at the attention of the romans it's an archaeologist's dream i love this place and the picture it paints of what the carthaginian world must have been like these were carthaginians enjoying the good life and their houses would have impressed any estate agent [Music] archaeologists have called this house number 23 sphinx street and here's the courtyard the central area of the house with his very own fresh water supply and leading off it we have a kitchen very very compact but with all the latest mod cons including a bread oven and now we come to this marvellous suite of rooms perfect not only for entertaining guests but also just for relaxing with the family no shortage of storage space you'll see with these inbuilt cupboards and also look at this these were laid by the previous owners practical because they're waterproof and easy to clean but also beautiful look at the delicate marble inlay and now for the piesta resistance this private bathroom with ample changing area and this fantastic hip bath replete with seat and arm rests and a basin just lie back and luxuriate in the hot water [Music] this house wasn't unique most houses in kirkuan had their own private bathroom and complex plumbing systems all this 2 000 years for anywhere in northern europe would come close to equaling this level of practical luxury and this is a backwater and nowhere can you imagine what carthage itself looked like sophisticated towns like this dotted the mediterranean but where did all the money come from that paid for this fine living [Music] the answer lies in the soil it's easy to appreciate the brilliance of a civilization when you look at intricately carved sculpture glittering jewels and brightly burnished gold but the fields of north africa were carthage's real treasures [Music] the humble olive the fuel of the ancient world not only were these a wonderful source of nutrition but their oil filled the lamps which lit millions of homes now the carthaginians planted thousands upon thousands of olive groves right across north africa and these weren't just for domestic consumption they were also to be exported and converted into hard ready cash the olive was a mainstay of the carthaginian economy they were unique olives in their precious oil could be cooked eaten and provided light they were grown on an enormous scale and shipped across the mediterranean carthage had coupled the secret of their farming with a superb trading network and the money poured in the sea was the hub of their empire their ports were placed strategically from east to west giving them a foothold in every land they were the first people to see the enormous possibilities of a joined up mediterranean the centuries the carthaginian fleets had the western mediterranean sewn up even when a market was closed to their goods they still found a way in [Music] the wine market was dominated by the greeks who had a firm stranglehold over it so the answer for the carthaginians was a canny bitter marketing these are two fragments of carthaginian flasks they were once filled with wine the inscriptions read mighton and aris typical carthaginian names but unusually both are written in the greek script and in the greek style this confused archaeologists until they realized what the carthaginians game was they were replacing that tell-tale spidery punic script for greek why were they doing that because greek wine was considered to be the bordeaux of the ancient world it was a real mark of quality very clever by the 3rd century bc carthaginian wine was being drunk all over the mediterranean even in athens here in suniraksi in sardinia the carthaginians use their trade to overwhelm the local people [Music] from 1800 bc the island was dominated by mysterious people called the naragi [Music] the metal artifacts and the settlements that they have left behind hint at this being a very sophisticated civilization [Music] but when the carthaginians arrived in the 6th century bc the niuragi way of life will be changed completely carthaginian imperialism in sardinia rarely came in the form of fire and slaughter instead what we find is an influx of carthaginian goods bells coins and smooth painted pottery and at the same time the disappearance of neuralgic artifacts this was conquest by shopping [Music] but is even the most benevolent of trading empires discovers occasionally the gloves do have to come off monticera in the heart of sardinia a tactical location that controlled the wealth of the region mines farming sea and trade the perfect position to dominate the land [Music] carthaginians were not the first people to recognize the potential of this site niraji and the phoenicians had been here first but montessori was a site that was worth fighting for and that's exactly what the carthaginians did when archaeologists first came to excavate here they found great swaves of ash the remains of the destroyed phoenician village and the most likely culprits the carthaginians it wasn't only in life but death too that the carthaginians imposed their will upon sardinia another addition the carthaginians brought the sardinian landscape were these impressive underground tombs the phoenicians before them had cremated their dead the carthaginians made a point of burying theirs the bones would have been kept in these niches here with each new burial the old bones would have been swept down onto the floor very practical arrangements but i think this goes deeper than any passing fashions in funeral arrangements what better way for newcomers to put down roots to tell the world that this would be their home for generations these tombs proclaim we're here to stay us and our ancestors they laid down the foundations of their culture and left this their most potent hallmark the sign of talent i think that this shows a spiritual people who brought religion into all aspects of their lives wherever i've been in the old carthaginian world spain sicily sardinia and north africa i've seen this sign it was easily replicated a clear and simple carthaginian icon almost like the crucifix for christians it's the clearest sign that much of southern europe was once carthaginian tanis herself remains elusive but one clue may lie here on these magnificent tombs once covered in glorious colours [Music] this woman may even represent tanis herself her cloak is folded like the wings of a bird in her hands she carries an incense pot and a dove the symbolism remains a mystery but the fine work is a testament to the strength of their devotion and carthage could afford to spend money on this kind of gesture [Music] their empire spanned the mediterranean sea and reaped huge profits [Music] this was too much of a temptation for a greedy rome [Music] when cato urged rome to destroy its rivals he was driven by more than a genocidal hatred as much as anything this was a business decision rome wanted to be a monopoly they wanted what carthage had so before they destroyed carthage they stripped it bare not just a treasure but of ideas especially those ideas that spoke about empire of greatest value were the works of maego carthage's agricultural genius his advice was so good that even today over two thousand years later the olive groves of tunisia are still grown to his specifications rome was careful to make sure that carthage never received the credit for her agricultural brilliance when they torched that amazing metropolis they made sure that they saved mago's precious works from the flames they were then carefully translated into latin then equally carefully plagiarized by roman authors that financial powerhouse that was rome was built on the agricultural know-how of carthage with maego's handbooks roman farmers could churn out olive oil wine and grain but they would do so the roman way on an industrial scale amid the savage destruction of carthage rome's calculated decision to preserve maego's work provided them with the keys to unlock the wealth of the mediterranean when rome finally defeated carthage after 150 years of war it simply opened its jaws wide and swallowed its rival empire whole but the new roman empire would be different the whole of the mediterranean would be reshaped to fit rome's voracious appetite the landscape was transformed parcelled up into huge estates tunisia carthage's garden of eden was turned into a one-croc province and that crop was wheat to make the bread that could feed rome for eight months a year the rest of the carthaginian empire was rearranged like the shelves of a supermarket sardinia for vines spain for olives sicily for grain carthage has supplied rome with the blueprint for its brand new empire but rome the brazen plagiarist would find its most important lessons would be from carthage's mistakes when the romans destroyed carthage they didn't just help themselves to useful know-how about olives and shipbuilding they took the whole idea of empire and romanized it they stole the secrets to carthage's success but just as importantly they learnt from carthage's failures for the next 600 years their empire didn't just rival carthages it surpassed it carthage's flaws would be their last the most important gift to its roman conquerors the romans learnt the art of making people feel roman even if they were on the far-flung corners of the empire it was an empire that was forged in violence but sustained by subtler forces by the ties that bind in carthaginian towns those ties just aren't evident this is a really typical street in kirkuan broad and flanked by rope on row of terraced houses what really surprises me about this place is the lack of public space sure here you have a large public square where people could have mixed and mingled but that's about it and is it just because kirku1 was a small insignificant place well archaeologists working in carthage haven't found any public spaces either it's extraordinary that from such a vast civilization not a single great monument survives nothing that says this is carthage it's not just magnificent palaces and glittering temples that tell you about the people it's the mundane and the humdrum everyday life like how people wash and what's clear is the carthaginians were doing things as individuals that romans were doing as a group 100 kilometers south of carthage in the heart of north africa is the spectacular roman town of duggar it is roman through and through identical to thousands of others they built from carlisle to mesopotamia it was at its peak in the second century a.d the lessons that rome learnt are abundantly clear at its heart three of the great institutions of roman life the temple the theater and the baths even though duggar was just a small country town it still had a wonderful bathing complex for its inhabitants to enjoy this wasn't just a matter of a quick scrub they had hot rooms where you could sweat out and scrape off the grime of the day cool plunge pools to reinvigorate the senses these bars were a real hive of social activity you could come here and listen to the gossip about who had been ripping off the imperial tax inspectors you might even come here and complain about your neighbor you suspected had stolen your best donkey what was more the baths were a real equalizer because once you got your kit off nobody knew whether you were rich or poor [Music] you came to bath houses a gall or a syrian but you entered the water a roman [Music] duggar is full of places like this places that bring people together and make them feel like they're part of something greater than just their immediate families one of the most powerful forces in the ancient world was religion but the romans had an answer for that too instead of fighting it they simply absorbed it foreign gods became roman gods a latin inscription here in duggar records how a group of local dignitaries built a temple to the goddess dayakalestus on behalf of the emperor septimius severus nothing strange in that you might say roman people building a temple to a roman goddess on behalf of a roman emperor there's more to this than meets the eye these local worthies were probably the descendants of the punic and african men who had once lived in this city before the roman conquest der kolestus was the roman name for tanet one of the most important of the carthaginian deities and septimius severus was not born in rome but in north africa so here we have african people worshiping an african goddess and dedicating their temple to an african emperor all in the name of rome the carthaginians could never inspire that sense of belonging here in matia sicily they paid the price for their failings they could never win the hearts and minds of their allies they couldn't even rely on loyalty from the phoenicians a people who had come from the same stock and were so similar to the carthaginians that they thought themselves cousins they even called upon carthage to help defend them from marauding greeks the carthaginian army was soundly beaten by the greeks but then it became clear the phoenicians their so-called allies had betrayed them archaeologists working at matia have been able to confirm that the carthaginian defeat was not just the product of greek military might [Music] well the carthaginian armies were sweating their guts out on the hot sicilian plains their allies from the phoenician colonies here were busy making fat profits trading with carthage's enemy the greeks what made it worse was the actual level of trade increased considerably during this period of conflict and also archaeologists who've been excavating some of the greek cities over here have found that the phoenicians were also dealing arms too who needed enemies when he had friends like these and the brutal truth was that for many of the phoenician cities in sicily the carthaginians were just another bunch of outsiders interfering in their affairs and after all business was business much better to maintain cordial trade relations with the greek cities some of them only 20 miles away rather than to bother too much with carthage over 200 miles across the sea carthage's allies were fair weather friends their empire was based on trade and his people were kept happy with a ready flow of cash but in hard times the carthaginians found themselves very alone [Music] even at the final battle of zama where hannibal was fighting against the invading roman armies to save carthage itself who was his army made up of mercenaries people whose loyalty lasted only as long as their pay packets did compare this with rome where it has calculated that around a quarter of their soldiers died fighting in the second punic war for the roman cause but what happened to the many carthaginians who hadn't been slaughtered by rome's legions how did rome deal with them simple it turned them into romans don't kill them just assimilate them the end result is the same carthage vanishes [Music] this is a funerary monument from sicily from the roman period the man is wearing his toga and laurel garland at a dinner party basically having a good time with good food wine women and song in every way a very typical roman scene or so you might think but if you look carefully at some of the other decoration you'll see a very familiar symbol indeed the sign of tanett even the people who had once been rome's bitterest enemies had become roman in the modern western world we fall over ourselves to acknowledge the debt that we owe to the greeks and to the romans in contrast the carthaginians have been depicted as lying cowardly baby killers as all the bad things that rome was not so much fear did they inspire in the romans that they paid the ultimate price the total obliteration of their city and people rome's savage act of vandalism ensured that their true achievements were wiped out not only physically but also from history all that we are left with is a version of history the romans wanted us to believe i think that the carthaginians made an enormous impact on the ancient world they provided rome with many of its best ideas it gave them the blueprint for a mediterranean empire in truth carthage was not rome's opposite but its forerunner and teacher the worthy enemy who took rome to the brink and taught them how to become great you

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Keywords: Documentary, history documentary, History, Documentary Movies - Topic, stories, 2017 documentary, BBC documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Channel 4 documentary, Carthaginians, Documentaries, Full length Documentaries, documentary history, real, Carthage, Full Documentary

Id: 0DnXV6R0nh0

Length: 48min 9sec (2889 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2017